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How Women Keep Reinventing Independent Publishing

From 2010 to 2023, Anderson interviewed 25 trailblazing women and nonbinary editors and publishers who helped shape the small press landscape from the 1950s through the 1980s. The result is Women in Independent Publishing: A History of Unsung Innovators, 1953–1989, an intimate yet thorough oral history that includes interviews with such editors and publishers as Lee Ann Brown of Tender Buttons Press, Lindy Hough of North Atlantic Books, Bernadette Mayer of United Artists Books, and C.D. Wright of Long Roads Press, all of whom injected new voices and perspectives into the literary landscape and approached the publishing process on their own terms.

The presses highlighted in the book constituted what Anderson calls “a feisty counterculture” of feminist, lesbian, and Black presses publishing formally experimental and politically radical works. They were often based outside the publishing hub of New York City and housed “in unexpected places, like apartment kitchens and church basements,” where books and zines were often collated and stitched by hand. While traditional printing spaces had what Anderson called a “history of sexist exclusion,” the mimeograph made the production process widely accessible, leading to a boom in women-helmed small presses.

“The indie space shows us possibilities for success in a context where commercial success is not the primary motivation,” Anderson said. “Women and nonbinary people often, by socialization and by necessity, have nonmainstream views of success and power.” She noted that for many women and other marginalized publishers, in years past and the present day, small press publishing “provides more opportunities to build something new than to try to play a game that’s rigged.”

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